During the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration launched many programs to improve the economy and reduce unemployment. The Federal Writers Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration, hired writers to compose guidebooks for each state and interviewers to collect folklore. Historian John Zimm culled through left over material from the Project’s Wisconsin branch for a collection called Blue Men & River Monsters.
Zimm’s focus was on the notes by field researchers whose mission was to record oral traditions in rural communities before they were forgotten. Amongst a grab bag of snippets are colorful stories of counterfeiters who hid out in local caves, memories of notorious murders and recollections of fires, feuds and floods. An entire section is devoted to odd tales of the supernatural, including stories that sound very Old World, about “underground people” who were “less plentiful than they used to be” along with ghost stories and incidents of clairvoyance.
